Maybe you had a bad experience with one at a birthday party, circus, or fair when you were younger. Or maybe the Stephen King movie “IT” scared the living crap out of you. Either way, the fear of clowns -or Coulrophobia- is pretty common among kids, teens, and adults alike.

evil clown

That portrayal of ‘Pennywise’ in IT, was terrifying, (Though, to be fair, Tim Curry is pretty unsettling in most of his roles) and it spurred an entire genre of movies that have haunted many individuals. Eerily enough, it isn’t just the fear brought from these movies that scares people, it’s the very really possibility of a ‘killer clown’. One man, named John Wayne Gacy often threw block parties for his neighbors and friends. During these parties he would dress as a clown to entertain the children. As it turns out, he was arrested in 1978 for the rape and murder of thirty-three boys and young men. Twenty seven of them were found in the crawl space under the floor in his house. Though he never killed while in his clown suit and makeup, this terrible happenstance made the idea of a ‘killer clown’ very real.

But most of this just re-affirms an already existing fear for people. Because it isn’t really the fact that “it’s a clown” that makes it scary. Most people have had their fear of clowns since they were children, and children are particularly sensitive to things being ‘not right’. They often cry at the sight of mascots, even if it is something very cute like a mouse or rabbit. It’s the simple fact that they know what size that creature should be, and to see it ten times larger is unnatural and scary. Clown costumes have unnatural hair colors, their faces and expressions are either concealed or exaggerated by thick make-up, their voices are changed to sound higher pitched or goofier. All of these things take away the normal human aspects of the person and leave you wondering what it is they are really like, or perhaps what they really are.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow

Nun

The men and women of God; Nuns, priests, rabbi, pastors, the pope, etc. All of these people live devoted lives of service to the lord, but you and I both know that there have been more than enough tv shows and movies devoted to these people where they aren’t exactly the peaceful, calm and righteous individuals they are supposed to be. This Halloween, why not be one of these variations on a religious figure.

Possibly the most popular of all of them is the ‘Naughty Nun’, the idea that a woman who is ‘married to god’ and therefore remains pure her entire life — still has a dirty side to her that simply will not quit. These costumes often include the usual habit and robe, but the robe is cut very short to appear more like a mini-skirt, and some sexy heels and/or panty hose with some kind of garter is worn. The naughty nurse is essentially a tease, you can never have her, but she’ll dress provocatively to entice you regardless.

The second most popular I would assume is the ‘priest who is packin’’, but no, not in the way that you’re thinking with your dirty mind. I’m talking about firepower, arms, weapons, the whole shebang. It’s always hilarious when in an action flick, the priest pulls from his robes a couple of ak47s and begins putting bullet holes in every enemy around him. He, like the naughty nun is a contradiction. He’s supposed to be a peaceful person full of love and the wisdom of the lord, when in reality he’s a skilled marksman who will take you down quickly should you give him reason to fight.

Those two examples aside, there are plenty of other ways to take something as simple and straightforward as a servant of god and twist it into something that might appear in a blockbuster film. All it takes is a little shopping around, and a few cool ideas to take your costume this Halloween from boring to a blast. A shotgun blast, that is.

The Black Death was a plague that swept through Europe in the 1300s that killed somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of their population. It was carried by fleas, which lived on rats, which could easily stow away on ships and be transported from country to country. The disease peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350.

the black death

There were three types of plague associated with this time period that took hundreds of thousands of lives, and their symptoms varied. If you had been so unfortunate to get the bubonic plague (which was very likely, as it was the most common of the three during the black death), you would first feel general uneasiness. Like that feeling that something is wrong, but you can’t quite place your finger on what. It would soon be followed by nausea, vomiting, headaches, and very painful joint aches. You would develop a fever of somewhere between 101 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and likely be dead within eight days. The mortality rate for the bubonic plague was somewhere between 30 and 75%

The second most common had a mortality rate of 90-95% and was known as the Pneumonic plague. There was a bad fever associated with this as well. But its main calling card was a bloody, phlegm-y, cough which became more free flowing and a bright red color the further the disease progressed.

The final and least common of the three plagues of the black death was the septicemic plague. Though it was not as common as the other two, it had a nearly one hundred percent mortality rate and the symptoms associated with it were mainly a high fever and purple patches on the skin due to blood clots and internal bleeding. The septicemic plague wasn’t a coughing, sick-sick, kind of illness, you see. It was a multiple organ failure kind of illness.

There have been modern cases of ‘plague’ as recently as 1995, but nowhere close to the epidemic that it was back then. So far, only one modern case has been resistant to antibiotics. Let us hope that it does not mutate and become as dangerous to us as it was to the people of the medieval times.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow